The present invention relates to monopulse radar and more particularly to the radar traditionally used for airborne weather detection.
Certain dedicated systems are currently manufactured to warn of potential flight hazards. Chief among these systems are those designed to prevent controlled flight into terrain accidents. Controlled flight into terrain accidents currently account for the greatest number of air fatalities, the risk of which is greatly increased by operations in low visibility conditions. Technology for avoiding controlled flight into terrain includes ground proximity warning systems, and terrain awareness and display systems.
Ground proximity warning systems use altitude information from radio altimeters and barometric altimeters, in conjunction with an individual aircraft's speed and climb characteristics, to warn flight crews that the terrain below the aircraft is rising dangerously fast. The ground proximity warning systems can also provide an aircraft flight crew with additional alerts by, for example, warning of aircraft deviation below glideslope or inappropriate aircraft attitude or configuration. Typical examples of ground proximity warning systems are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,946,358 entitled "Aircraft Ground Proximity Warning Instrument" and U.S. Pat. No. 4,914,436 entitled "Ground Proximity Approach Warning System Without Landing Flap Input," both incorporated herein by reference.
Terrain awareness and display systems combine ground proximity warning system technology with navigation data, a built-in terrain data base and existing cockpit display technology such as color weather radar, electronic flight instrument systems (EFIS) and map displays. Terrain awareness and display systems provide "look ahead" terrain warnings by utilizing present aircraft positions and a terrain data base to predict the aircraft's future position with respect to terrain. A typical example of a terrain awareness system is described in co-pending application Ser. No. 08/509,660, filed Jul. 31, 1995, entitled "Terrain Awareness System" by Muller et al, attorney docket number 543-94-001 and assigned to the same assignee as the present application; as well as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,244.
Although the ground proximity warning systems and terrain awareness and display systems described in the above-mentioned references have greatly reduced the controlled flight into terrain risk for aviation worldwide, both ground proximity warning systems and terrain awareness and display systems have some limitations. Neither of these systems actually "sees" the terrain or other obstructions ahead of the aircraft. Ground proximity warning systems differentiate the aircraft's altitude signals to detect abnormally high closure rates with terrain. Thus, discontinuities in the terrain profiles, such as a cliff, may not generate an alert in sufficient time to prevent an accident. The more sophisticated "look ahead" function of terrain awareness and display systems compares aircraft position data, based on either dead reckoning or a global positioning system, with a stored terrain map to calculate the aircraft's probable position relative to the terrain and determine whether a terrain collision threat exists. However, this system cannot detect collision threats due to obstructions not contained within the database. For example, temporary structures such as construction cranes would not be modeled in the database. In addition, the integrity of the alerting function depends directly upon the integrity of the aircraft position data. Errors in aircraft position could reduce the warning time given the flight crew. In addition, non-fixed terrain features and non-fixed terrain threats such as, for example, aircraft or vehicular traffic on the runway, are also not readily determinable by typical ground proximity warning systems.
Radar has the potential to provide the flight crew with real-time terrain information independent of both a calculated position and a computer-stored terrain data base. However, the only radar normally carried aboard non-military aircraft is weather radar. Weather radar has characteristics that make it non optimal for detecting terrain threats specifically. For example, the weather radar typically operates at a wavelength optimized to reflect small droplets of water. This wavelength presents additional problems when attempting to resolve large and/or closely spaced targets. Existing weather radar antennae also exhibit a limited elevation sweep angle.
The added weight and expense of a radar dedicated to terrain detection in addition to the already required weather radar prohibits use of terrain only radar systems. Yet, additional safety could be realized through the use of this additional radar information.